


Untitled - with Author's Commentary

by Fabrisse



Category: Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T. S. Eliot
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 11:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12652416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: The Author's Commentary that no one asked for.  I'm experimenting with the format and thought this story/poem would be a great way to begin.  All commentary is inbold.  Below there is a link to a version without comments.The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock





	Untitled - with Author's Commentary

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Untitled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/591369) by [Fabrisse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse). 



> If there are any of my stories you would like to have commentary on, please contact me at the email address in my profile.

He knew them all with their white and braceleted arms.  
Knew them once, in the days before,  
When women could come and go  
Talking of Michelangelo.

**The above are all direct references to T.S. Eliot’s poem. There will be more of them.**

He could not dare to eat a peach  
(She’s a peach of a girl his mates would say,  
But Prufrock was not made that way.)

**Slipping into slang from the time.**

Today and today are different.  
It’s always today, tomorrow never comes  
There’s never any jam or even marmalade  
**This passage references _Macbeth_ and _Alice in Wonderland_. The next several lines go back to Eliot and begin to bring in the Great War.**  
And the endless cups of tea are not  
In delicate china with saucers so thin  
A newspaper could be read through them.

There are bones, though, not to make china,  
Not to make peace  
There’s no more music from distant rooms  
Only booming and flashing guns.  
Syncopated like the ragtime from a music hall

(He knows the faces, saw them on his walks  
Through the city where he stalked  
Experiences and saw the men draw their pipes)

**There are long parts of Prufrock detailing the atmosphere of London and Prufrock’s long walks. The smogs, the men he sees going past -- not of his class -- are part of his solitary nature, though it’s implied the author is walking with him through the streets.**

There are no bracelets now.  
The white is not the living white of arms,  
But the dead white of bones, of bleached coifs,  
Of Sisters caring for all the men  
Mothers-in-waiting, never to bear their children,  
Nursing the men around him.

**From “The white is not…” to the end of the passage is a direct reference to the so-called _Roses of No Man’s Land_ the Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) women and the nurses who came from England. To American eyes they look more like nuns, with their starched white coifs, than they do old time nurses.**

Officer, they say. Fit from walks,  
Classed with the best by accent and study.  
**The right accent, some minor experience of the training units at public school, and a knack for numbers are all that he needs to be an officer early in the war.**  
An easy billet, counting out the number of uniforms,  
The tins of bully beef, the cups _and_ the tea,  
All counted by he who counted and remembered  
The women who come and go  
Discussing Michelangelo.

And he keeps counting. He’s not Prince Hamlet,  
**The above lines directly reference T.S. Eliot.**  
He’s more an ancient Roman than a Dane,  
A scholar who watches from the back as the play  
Is the thing played out before him.

This stage is all the world, a dug-in wooden O,  
**Following up on Eliot’s Shakespeare references, Prufrock is cast as an Horatio figure rather than a protagonist.**  
Where the men pop up to be caught  
On the wire  
Or by fire  
Stopping every bullet with a khaki shirt.

**Years ago, I read that Winston Churchill said, referencing Somme, “There must be a better way to stop German bullets than with a khaki shirt.” I’ve never again been able to find that reference, so it may be apocryphal.**

Here, even here, there’s yellow smoke,  
No panes will keep it out,  
**Another reference to Prufrock’s walks through the London smog.**  
All pains will come when it burns the lungs,  
Sears the skin, sinking,  
**Mustard gas poisons the soil for years, blisters the skin, and damages the lungs and eyes.**  
a snake slithering up their rolled puttees  
to kill all where they stand.

And he’s counting them now,  
The dead, and the bullets to make more dead  
(But they’re the enemy, we have to fight  
Somewhere there must be some light.  
**The below is a direct reference to the death of[Saki (H. H. Munro)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saki). He wrote some very insightful, and often humorous, short stories. The men knew not to strike a match at night where the German snipers could get them. When one man did, Munro hissed “Put out that light,” and the sniper focused on his voice.**  
“Put out that lucifer **Slang term for a match. It’s still used in Belgian French (and possibly French French).**  
Do you want to…”  
The rest is silenced.)

He counts the shells  
Sends them out efficiently --  
Commenting quietly as the colonel decants  
Whiskey in his tea –  
Shaken by the standing dead  
All of whom must be counted again.

**Prufrock’s counting is a major theme for Eliot, showing Prufrock as a man apart, analyzing rather than participating. In the war, that just makes him an excellent quartermaster officer.**

In the village, they come and go  
Marching puts up quite a show  
And the women will wrap their arms,  
Braceleted with rags for warmth,  
Around anyone with bully beef or a tin of fruit.

**Again, referencing the original poem at first, but with additional references to the displaced and hungry. Bully beef was tinned meat - probably best not to ask if it ever saw a cow - and there were some major scandals about profiteering and illness around it.**

(Picardy is lovely this time of year.  
See the Ardennes. Visit Spa.  
Get passionate in Passchendaele.  
**The above are all World War I battlegrounds. Picardy, the Ardennes, and Spa (yes, it’s where the modern English word originates) were all tourist areas for those who wanted country air, or to take the waters, for their health. Passchendaele, just outside of Ypres (Ieper) and where the 3rd Battle of Ypres took place, wasn’t a tourist area, but I liked the alliteration.**  
The mademoiselle from Armentieres  
Was shot in her bed.  
Inky-dinky parley-voo.)

**["The Mademoiselle from Armentieres"](http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/mademoisellefromarmentieres.htm) was a very popular music hall song during the war. It was also used as a marching song. The tune goes back to 1830 in French. The English lyrics are claimed by many people. (Thanks Wikipedia). In the U.S. the repeated line at the end of every chorus is usually spelled “Inky-dinky parley-voo,” but the British spelling is apparently “Hinky-dinky parley-voo.” As with most references to French mesdemoiselles, the song is considered risque at best.**

Once there was time  
So much time  
**The following lines reference[Ecclesiastes 3: 2-8](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+3) with its references to the times to plant and reap, etc.**  
Time to grow old  
(a time to be born,  
but all around is a time to die)  
There’s time to entrench, and time to eat rats  
And time is never enough to stay  
in a quiet cafe  
to measure a life in coffee spoons.  
**The above is one of the more famous images from the Eliot’s poem.**  
Coffee is rationed. The spoons melted for ordnance.

Quartermaster. Accountant. Counting the dead  
(and the bullets that killed them,  
The shells for the howitzers,  
The gasoline for the airplanes  
An ace of aces counting every item,  
**”Ace of Aces” is a term coined by the flyers in World War 1. An ace had five documented kills in dogfights. Technically, an ace of aces had twenty-five.**  
Trying not to see a face with every canteen returned  
Because it can no longer hold water.)

_Let us go you and I and walk the grounds_  
_Here the air is fresh, and my little room is in the basement,_  
_Guarding the provisions, safe from trench fever_  
_And lice._  
_The mice aren’t so bad, breaking their teeth on tins._  
_Though sometimes I feel pinned against a wall_  
_Wriggling with doubt because men around me are dying._  


A captain is killed. He’s next in line.  
For promotion, for death.  
How do they differ?  
The major takes him aside  
And tells him pissing on a handkerchief  
Works better than a mask for Chlorine gas.

The gas is odorless now. Sulfur and mustard  
And nothing will stop it from burning.  
He orders the men to do as they must  
Go over the top  
Go under the wire  
Go into the rat-tat of machine gun fire.  
Nothing is as bad as the burning,  
Not even watching them burn.

He visits the men in the field hospital;  
Recognizes the nurses, the VADs,  
Not by name, but by type.  
And late at night, as he lies in a cot  
Beside the men he ordered to their deaths  
To the men that lived through the inferno  
And who will take their words out of Hades  
**The epigraph of the _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_ is taken from Dante’s Inferno and refers to the fact that no one returns from the afterlife. Many people referred to the trenches as hell.**  
He hears the nurses come and go  
Talking of Michelangelo  
The world antebellum springs before him  
A world where he counted  
The money his clients wanted to invest  
The jewelry they wanted to insure  
The sweets and the ices everyone ate  
While music played in distant rooms  
Covering the murmur of well-bred voices.

**Again, a direct reference to the words of the poem and the impression of Prufrock as a man apart, who deals in numbers rather than emotions, and who appreciates the delicacy of pre-war life, especially at his class level.**

He’s counted the wounded,  
Counted their wounds  
Counted the medals  
And the letters he’ll write to their families.  
A step up for him, Major Prufrock,  
Asked to join King Albert and the Americans  
For one. last. push.

**August of 1918. Men were being prepared to go to other fronts, but with American help, the Belgians and the British thought a major push along the salient, pushing toward Germany, might be enough to gain a brokered peace.**

First there’s time for coffee,  
For writing to a home he no longer knows,  
For speaking softly to one whose arms he once knew  
For smiling and taking her hand.

Two days.  
He counts them.

Two days away from death  
(Two days and it’s always today,  
There’s no future in it.)

**If it could be afforded, a rest and relaxation period with passes into one of the liberty towns would be given to the officers and men before a battle. They had periods of regularly scheduled rest and relaxation, usually of a couple of weeks for restocking and getting new personnel, every twelve weeks or so. But if the time allowed, then preparation for the battle included a few days off. Also, echoing back to the earlier reference to _Alice in Wonderland_.**

They walk through the garden  
Older in experience than years  
She’s the temptation and the tempted.  
What does it matter how he parts his hair?  
The bottoms of his trousers are rolled –  
It helps prevent lice, so they say.

There’s a tree in the garden.  
There always is.  
(And a little bit of Adam in every man.)  
**The Garden of Eden mostly, with a little Garden of Gethsemane, both in the biblical and the[Kipling](http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_gethsem.htm) sense, included.**  
Autumn will come  
Tomorrow  
Even if it’s always today.  
On the tree, there’s one last peach --  
**Arguably, the most famous line of Prufrock is “Do I dare to eat a peach?” It’s presented as a direct contradiction to the “life measured in coffee spoons.”**  
Succulent,  
Spared from the insects by the lateness of the season.  
They reach for it together,  
But she bites first.  
He takes his bite from the same spot  
Juice dripping down his chin --  
A moment of peace is always a win –  
One ghostly whisper of a smile,  
A memory of a shared past,  
And in that moment…  
He dares.


End file.
